Grizzly 8" jointer blades

[David Romano]

I purchased the Grizzly G0490 about 2 months ago and have been pretty happy with it. Unfortunately, I have already chipped the (4) blades. I also bought the Veritas Jointer Blade Sharpener (nice tool), a 9x12 granite surface plate and a variety of fine grit sharpening sandpapers. It's a nice sharpening setup.

Looking at the blades, I can see that the cutting tip, extending about 3/8" back is brazed on. There are defintely 2 types of metal there. My initial reaction was that Griz was trying to save money by using cheap steel for the body of the blade and good tool steel for the cutting edge, but considering the amount of time and sandpaper it took me to lap the backs and grind out the chips - 3 hours, I wonder if I might have carbide blades. Plus, why would someone bother to braze steel to steel, it doesn't make sense. The tips were obviously harder than the body, but I've never tried to sharpen carbide, so I have no basis for comparison. Maybe I just got lucky and someone at the factory put carbides on my jointer. How do I know for sure if it's carbide? Anyone ever hear of brazed steel/steel blades?

Comments?
David

[Mark Pruitt]

According to the catalog/website the knives are HSS. I would suggest calling them this morning and asking. They've always been easy to deal with when I've had questions.

[Brad Townsend]

I think I can assure you that you don't have carbide blades, as they would up the cost of the unit considerably. I recently bought a set of carbide tipped blades for my Griz jointer from Global Tooling and they cost me around $130. So far they seem to be holding up very nicely.

[Jim Becker]

If the knives are otherwise still sharp enough for use, just shift one or two of them laterally so that the "chips" don't line up. They will disappear on the cut. Most cutterheads will allow this since you don't need to move them far.

[David Romano]

I think I can assure you that you don't have carbide blades, as they would up the cost of the unit considerably. I recently bought a set of carbide tipped blades for my Griz jointer from Global Tooling and they cost me around $130. So far they seem to be holding up very nicely.
Brad, I agree that they would up the price considerably, but I was suggesting that carbides were put on by mistake

[David Romano]

If the knives are otherwise still sharp enough for use, just shift one or two of them laterally so that the "chips" don't line up. They will disappear on the cut. Most cutterheads will allow this since you don't need to move them far.
Jim, I did try that at first but the chipped area was over 1/8 wide so I couldn't move thew blades far enough.

[Roger Everett]

If the blades are brazed together, I think you might be right,carbide by mistake, as you think. I don't ever try to sharpen jointer or planer blades, it's much easier and not that costly to have them done at a sharpening service, the same ones that do my TS blades.
Roger

[Steve Clardy]

They won't be carbide. Griz doesn't include them as standard.
All of their blades are this way.
HHS brazed to a lesser steel.
My 20" is this way, all three sets of blades.
The reason most manfs. do this is, that theres only so much of the blade you can use up till they won't adjust up anymore after numerous sharpenings.
Theres no need to use HSS on the rest of the blade. Its not usuable.
If they were full HSS all the way through, the cost would be a lot more.

My surfacer originally cost 1300.00
I priced full carbide blades for it when I was considering buying it. The 4 carbide blades would have cost me 600.00

[bill walton]

In December, I purchased 2 3packs of Carbide blades from Infinity Tools for this jointer since they did not have 4 packs. I was fortunate enough to get a byrd head two weeks ago so I've got the head, 4 steel blades and 6 carbide blades that are now surplus. The carbide blades are very nice and very sharp as one knuckle witnessed whie doing the conversion. Pm me if you are interested

[Brad Townsend]

Brad, I agree that they would up the price considerably, but I was suggesting that carbides were put on by mistake Suppose that's possible, but when I was searching out carbide blades about three months ago, Grizz didn't even sell them.

[David Romano]

They won't be carbide. Griz doesn't include them as standard.
All of their blades are this way.
HHS brazed to a lesser steel.
My 20" is this way, all three sets of blades.
The reason most manfs. do this is, that theres only so much of the blade you can use up till they won't adjust up anymore after numerous sharpenings.
Theres no need to use HSS on the rest of the blade. Its not usuable.
If they were full HSS all the way through, the cost would be a lot more.

My surfacer originally cost 1300.00
I priced full carbide blades for it when I was considering buying it. The 4 carbide blades would have cost me 600.00
Steve,
A call to Griz confirm what you said. Until about a year ago, all their blades were M2 steel laminated to softer steel. Hard to beileve this saved them money. Now they have a different vendor and the blades are solid M2 steel. Thanks for the tip

David

[Steve Clardy]

Glad to see they've made a change. Though I haven't had any problem with the ones I have.